Champagne Behind Locked Doors
The invitation was a trap. The engagement was a lie. The desire was the only thing neither of them planned. When a leaked document forces crisis negotiator and covert club owner Valentina Saye to spend a members-only weekend posing as the fiancée of ex-intelligence fixer Darius Kade, she knows exactly what the Velvet Republic wants: a performance of intimacy that can be recorded, weaponized, and held over both of them forever. What she doesn't plan for is the negotiation. Locked on a surveillance-wired hotel floor with one bed, one cover story, and a council member already watching from inside the room, Valentina and Darius do what neither of them does easily — they tell the truth about what they want and what they won't give, in precise adult terms, with a safe word that means something. The performance becomes a trap for their enemy. The desire becomes something harder to contain. Council member Aldric Voss has Valentina's real name on a founding document and the leverage to destroy the sanctuary she built for everyone the republic ever used. The only way out is to bait him with false evidence, hold their cover through a dinner built on veiled threats and champagne that tastes like warning, and decide — before the locked floor opens — whether last night was strategy or something they're choosing to keep. Dangerous, opulent, and emotionally exacting, *Champagne Behind Locked Doors* is a dark erotic romance about surveillance, surrender, and what it means to give someone your real name when the whole republic is listening. Content warnings: Explicit sexual content, surveillance, blackmail, violence threat. All intimate content is consensual, negotiated, and between adult characters. Part of The Velvet Republic series. Can be read as an entry point but rewards series readers. Free sample available.